Box 9.3 Can private

Box 9.3 Can private schooling be aligned to learning for all? (continued) delivery, acting on a variety of motivations. But if they do allow or even encourage private schooling, they need to remain alert to all the risks just outlined. The problems outlined in this Report do not disappear simply because of a change in a delivery mechanism. Governments may choose to contract out some service delivery, but they should never contract out the responsibility for ensuring that all children and youth have the opportunity to learn. Figure B9.3.1 In Bangladesh, there are 11 different kinds of nonstate providers of presecondary education Number of institutions under each nongovernment provider of presecondary education (2016) Kindergarten BRAC learning centers High madrasha attached NGO schools Ebtedayee madrasha Nongovernment Other NGO learning centers Mosque-based learning centers Temple-based learning centers Quami Tea garden 0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 Number of institutions Source: WDR 2018 team, using data from Directorate of Primary Education, Bangladesh (2016). Data at http:// bit.do/WDR2018-Fig_B9-3-1. Note: NGO = nongovernmental organization. Source: WDR 2018 team. a. World Bank (2017a). b. D. Capital Partners (2016). c. Härmä (2013). d. Oketch and others (2010). e. Heyneman and Stern (2014). f. Day Ashley and others (2014); Heyneman and Stern (2014). g. Heyneman and Stern (2014). h. Kingdon (2017); Urquiola (2016). i. Andrabi, Das, and Khwaja (2008); Day Ashley and others (2014); Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2015). j. Sakellariou (2017). k. Oketch and others (2010); Tooley (2005). l. Heyneman and Stern (2014). m. Bold and others (2017). n. de la Croix and Doepke (2009); Kosec (2014); Sandström and Bergström (2005). o. Akaguri (2014); Härmä (2011). p. “Educação Integral,” Secretaria de Educação, State of Pernambuco, Várzea, Recife, Brazil, http://www.educacao.pe.gov.br/portal /?pag=1&men=70. q. Barrera-Osorio and others (2016). r. Kingdon (2017). s. Economist (2017). t. Barrera-Osorio and others (2016). to monitor student learning are effective, they can sometimes lead to biases toward better-performing students, short-term test preparation, or a narrow focus on subjects that are explicitly tested. The multiplicity of actors and institutions in an education system makes the outcomes of efforts to improve learning unpredictable. 24 Learning is a complex process that is difficult to break down into simple linear relationships from cause to effect. The multiple interactions that characterize teaching and learning and the almost continuous feedback that they provide can result in teachers, parents, and students adapting their behavior in unpredictable ways. For example, the introduction of school grants in Andhra Pradesh, India, and in Zambia failed to improve student learning in the long term because parents reduced their 178 | World Development Report 2018

financial support in anticipation of the increase in government funding. 25 Reducing the financial burden on parents may be a desirable effect of these grants, but it was not their primary intent. More generally, many factors outside the classroom and the school system, including health and economic shocks, can alter the impact of interventions aimed at improving learning. Failure to learn and adjust policies in response to such changes often means that interventions do not work as planned. Education systems are “sticky” Education systems are slow to change. Some of the best-known successes in reforming systems, such as in Chile or Finland, took decades from initiation to fruition. Even at the micro level, such as in schools in the United States that enacted comprehensive school reform, it took 8–14 years for the full effects to be felt. 26 These long time frames present two further challenges to better aligning education systems with learning. First, to improve learning, policies usually have to remain relatively consistent. This is difficult under normal circumstances: changes in government, volatile funding, and shifts in the overall economic context all threaten the sustainability of policies. 27 But staying the course is even more challenging when the reforms fail to show any benefits in the short run. Second, the long lags make program evaluation more difficult, because attributing improvements to specific interventions is especially challenging when their impacts emerge only in the long run. Implementation capacity to improve learning at scale is often lacking Opacity and stickiness make technical alignment hard enough to achieve; weaknesses in implementation capacity make the task even more daunting. Successful implementation depends on effective leadership, coordination between education agencies, and implementation teams that are motivated, use resources efficiently, and can troubleshoot in real time—all of which are in short supply in many systems. Moreover, behavioral economics highlights many cognitive pitfalls that policy makers commonly face in complex operating environments. These include difficulty in evaluating policy effectiveness when faced with too many options; loss aversion, or the tendency to feel failures more intensely than successes, which makes policy makers wary of experimentation; biases that lead to selective use of information to reinforce existing views; and relational bias, which makes it harder for officials with elite educational backgrounds to grasp the challenges of mass education. 28 Education agencies often lack the capabilities needed to deal with these complexities. 29 A recent assessment shows how multitasking and fragmentation within education agencies can blur lines of accountability for learning. In Cyprus, because of the absence of a department for human resources and general administration, pedagogical departments had to manage these responsibilities, diverting time from developing programs and policies. 30 Public expenditure and financial accountability assessments also highlight the low capacity in many developing countries in key areas. For example, only about half of the 72 low- and middle-income countries assessed since 2010 had any system in place to ensure that resources intended for schools, health clinics, and other service delivery units reached the front lines. 31 * * * Technical challenges and lack of implementation capacity result in misaligned education systems. When countries are unable to overcome these challenges, their education systems deliver levels of learning far below what is possible. But tackling the technical barriers to better learning is only part of the battle. To break out of low-learning equilibriums, countries must also address the political constraints that are often at the heart of these technical misalignments. Notes 1. Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer (2015). 2. Bold and others (2013). 3. Acemoglu (2010). 4. Béteille and Ramachandran (2016); Bruns, Filmer, and Patrinos (2011); Duthilleul (2005). 5. Hallak and Poisson (2007); Transparency International (2009). 6. Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh (2017). 7. World Bank (2010). 8. World Bank (2015b). 9. See DISE website, http://udise.in/. 10. OECD (2016); UIS (2017). 11. Rajkumar and Swaroop (2008); Suryadarma (2012). 12. Muralidharan and others (2017). 13. Pritchett and Filmer (1999). 14. Bruns and Luque (2015); Finan, Olken, and Pande (2015). 15. Glewwe and others (2011); OECD (2009). 16. World Bank (2015a); Reboot (2013). Education systems are misaligned with learning | 179